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Lay off the McCanns

I wrote about Madeleine McCann just after she'd been abducted, and was quite startled by my postbag. Roughly half the letters sympathised impotently with Gerry and Kate McCann; the other half were entirely, and brutally, condemnatory.

Who leaves three toddlers unattended for half an hour at a time, they asked? The McCanns were "asking for it", they were "selfish", they were "criminally careless". I hardly think so: leaving small children alone is never wise, but most of us avoid doing it because we're frightened of choking, not of marauding child-snatchers; if we believed that paedophiles lurk around every corner, we'd all go insane and never leave the house.

I was really taken aback by these letters, chiefly because when an unspeakably awful thing happens, compassion…

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